We have been playing catch-up with the latest BBC "costume adaptation" - Blandings, based upon the stories by that most archetypal British writer of the early 20th century, P.G. Wodehouse. And it is fab!
Starring none other than house favourite Jennifer Saunders (as Aunt Connie) alongside a magnificently bumbling Timothy Spall (as Lord Clarence Emsworth), with The Fast Show's Mark Williams as Beach the butler and the (rather cute actually) Jack Farthing as the perpetually flighty Freddie, the series also featured cameo roles from David Walliams and even popstrel Paloma Faith! Needless to say, it is campness personified.
With typically arch Wodehouse dialogue, counterbalanced by lashings of farce - and of course a 40-stone pig called The Empress - the series pootles along rather wonderfully, and we love it! This is escapist, harmless fun, of an old-fashioned kind one doesn't usually get in these cynical, eternally "yoof-orientated" flashing-graphic times.
Nowhere near as classy as Downton Abbey or any number of costume dramas, nor, perhaps more closely relevant, does it match the sublime qualities of say Mapp and Lucia. However, Blandings always cheers us up, and leaves us wanting more, and that is no bad thing at all.
Here's some clips:
I sincerely hope the BBC (under its new governance) sees fit to commission a second series!
Blandings
